R. Kelly’s Ex-Wife, Andrea Kelly, Has Spoken Out About Her Abusive Marriage

R. Kelly’s ex-wife, Andrea Kelly, has spoken out about her abusive marriage to the R&B singer. During an appearance on The View, Kelly spoke on the time the singer attacked her in his Hummer. She said, “A lot of people know that I’m a professional dancer, so my body is my work. I remember one time he did attack me in the back of a Hummer and I do suffer from PTSD because of it. Whenever I would see Hummers on the road, I would shake, my hands would sweat and I would get nervous and I couldn’t breathe. He attacked me one time in the back of a Hummer and I thought I was going to die because what he had done was he had taken my left arm and pulled it behind me and his weight was on my body but he didn’t realize his forearm was on my neck. So, as he’s pressing down, my breathing is getting labored and the only reason I think I made it out is because I said, ‘Robert, you’re going to kill me! I can’t breathe! You have to get your arms off of my neck!’”

Andrea continued, “I just remember sitting in the back of the Hummer and it got blue and I just thought, ‘I’m going to die… and he’s going to drive off with my body in the back seat and nobody’s gonna know.’”

She also revealed that R. Kelly hogtied her. She said, “He got really angry and he started arguing with me. I just remember instantly when he grabbed me and threw me down, I was on my stomach. I’m trying to fight to get away so what he did was grab the strap to his robe, he had his knee in my back, and he took both of my arms behind me, tied them, then attached me legs to my arms and hogtied me and left me on the side of the bed. And he actually fell asleep, and that’s the only way I got away.”

Andrea said that she filed for divorce after contemplating suicide. She explained, “I went out on the balcony and I climbed up…One foot was on the railing and the other was on the wall…I looked down and God allowed me to see myself laying in blood. That was my darkest moment…The fact that I was willing to leave [my children] let me known the best thing you have to do for you and your children to live is leave.”

On why the has decided to come forward, Andrea said, “You cannot not speak when someone’s life and what they’ve been through is parallel to yours. I wanted to bring validity to these women’s stories…So much of it falls on deaf ears and no one believes them…I was like, ‘If no one else is going to speak up for her, if no one else is going to believe her, at least she knows that I do.’ (…) Some of the things [another victim] had described in detail, I had been through, I mean, verbatim. It’s about saving lives.”